WINNERS FIND A WAY PODCAST

Trent Clark Interviews Rob Harrison

Trent Clark: [00:00:39] Hello and welcome to the winners find a way show. I am your host, Trent Clark, CEO of Leadership and Athletic Influencer Marketing. I am a serial entrepreneur. I speak globally, worldwide, in over 17 countries and just authored my newest book, Leading Winning Teams. Super pumped up about that. You can check it out. I will have a way for you to buy that down below. And most people know me because I spent over 12 years and went to three World Series as a coach in Major League Baseball. I am so excited that you joined us today where I welcome a good British man. Cheerio, Rob Harrison, what’s going on?

Rob Harrison: [00:01:19] Hey, thanks for having me, man. Thanks. I really appreciate that. It was a great little intro as well. Yeah.

Trent Clark: [00:01:24] You’re the CEO of Magnified. We’re going to talk all sorts about the brand. But you are actually not across the pond from me right now. You have left your great country of the United Kingdom, and you’ve headed off to Mexico because you followed a girl. Is that fair?

Rob Harrison: [00:01:40] Exactly that. Yeah. It is. Yeah. I’m one of the victims.

Trent Clark: [00:01:43] No, no, no, one of the smart ones, man. Uh, so that’s awesome. So you’ve married a young lady from Mexico? Uh, been in that now for four years. Congratulations. It’s super awesome. And, uh, haven’t had the kids yet. Just having dogs, which is good. That’s impressive. Um, and you’ve you’ve developed this new brand, Magnified. You’ve done a bunch of things, uh, from, you know, being aviation engineer over in the Royal Navy over 12 years in that gig, uh, coming back to the UK, looking at your dream job as an engineer, and you’ve done some pretty crazy stuff, man. Uh, rebuilt your own house, which is cool. And, uh, definitely, uh, got into the ultra marathon work and even did some of that for the Royal Navy and paid athlete there to serve the military, do a little engineering and a little training. So, done that. And, man, uh, you had probably one of the craziest 2019s. I mean, most people look back and go, it’s almost like pre Jesus now, man. It’s like before Christ and after, right? It’s like before pandemic and after. So you’re 2019 before we go into the pandemic, and you rebuild a house, you turn down your dream job, you leave the military, uh, you propose to your wife to be, uh, you head off to a new land and homeland in Mexico and do an Ironman, is that right? All in the same year.

Rob Harrison: [00:03:10] Exactly that. That’s it. The test. The test was then. Yeah.

Trent Clark: [00:03:14] Just trying to go for my calendar, see if I could fill it up or not.

Rob Harrison: [00:03:17] That’s it exactly. Yeah. There’s not usually a spare day. Or if there was one, it was getting filled.

Trent Clark: [00:03:22] You know, it’s impressive that you actually maintain a relationship through all that.

Rob Harrison: [00:03:25] Well, that’s where the relationship goes from being remote. And I think from having that distance relationship and having time to concentrate on certain things and then having the quality time, with my partner definitely helped. I think that was definitely a big, big part of it as well. Yeah.

Trent Clark: [00:03:44] So, you know, engineer by trade, I got to ask you, man, Tell us a little about what Magnified does.

Rob Harrison: [00:03:52] So we are a fully outsourced sales agency for coaches and agencies around the world. And our main role within those companies as well, when we come in as a remote team, is to just help with their systems, help with their sales processes and completely eliminate the entrepreneur who’s trying to do it themselves, trying to wear all the hats. For us we then come in and completely turn it around, increasing bottom line value, closing percentages, and also making sure it’s a smooth journey from their leads coming in to turn them into clients.

Trent Clark: [00:04:30] Excellent. And the Magnified Academy you have now, which is super exciting, that’s a new venture of yours. Who’s going to qualify for the Magnified Academy?

Rob Harrison: [00:04:42] The Magnified Academy is for anyone who’s looking to take up a role in sales closer. Okay. A remote sales closer as well. Do basically what I’ve been doing abroad for teams all over the world and also people who want to improve their sales skills. And the other side of things is there’s a lot of people out there as well that possibly can’t take on the outsourced sales team, but they want to be able to to improve their sales skills as well within their businesses. So even the coaches or the clients that we work with, for them to improve on their sales skills as well.

Trent Clark: [00:05:17] That’s awesome. And I tell you when we think about entrepreneurs and, and a lot of coaches like me, you know, we have a coaching academy, right? We have a group that works with a lot of business owners. And one of the first challenges of most business owners is getting sales, right. Like we are, you know, inefficient. We are battling. The right scripts, the hiring, the wrong people like you, you name it, man. Sales feels like pushing a boulder uphill for a lot of entrepreneurial ventures. And of course, most people, as you know, as owners, I like to say in our business, right, there’s very few entrepreneurs and owners that went to school for leadership and coaching. Yeah. And now I’ve got this team of 35, 200, and I got to do a lot of leading and coaching. And, uh, I didn’t really get trained for that. Right. Because I have a law degree or I have a, you know, marketing degree or whatever I have. Right. So now. Very few universities offer much for sales. So sales is like, uh, man, I talked to my good buddy Matthew Pollard. Right. Who wrote, The Introverts Edge on Sales Why Introverts Make the Best Salespeople. And man, he likes teaching himself on YouTube from probably Rob Harrison’s YouTube or, you know, his academy, right? But like, he just practice, practice, practice reps, reps. And I mean, most people won’t put in the time.

Rob Harrison: [00:06:50] That’s it. And that’s what it’s about. It’s like from my journey into sales from being in the military as an engineer, there was no part of my courses that taught me how to sell. And for me, when I got involved in it, it was something that kind of became the addiction. It was jumping in 100%, understanding and understanding everything else around the pitch. Okay, the pitch is only part of it. And the main part of the sale is, is understanding your buyer, understanding why they’re buying, okay, who they are, what they’re coming in for. And from that, that’s the kind of bit that really got me excited and understanding. Like, okay, there’s a whole bigger picture to this. And it was incredible. It was an amazing journey.

Trent Clark: [00:07:38] Well, you’re a pretty soft spoken guy, a pretty level headed bloke. Right. And you’re just, you know, saying what most people don’t know about you is you’re an all or nothing guy like you are. Once you go in, it’s all in. It’s not, uh, put my toe in the water and maybe I’m thinking about getting in like you’re in, man. Exactly. And people don’t always get that about you. How do you think ultra marathoner. Like, how do you think they missed that about you?

Rob Harrison: [00:08:10] Well, I think it is more of that I am the way I am. I do come across as having a chilled out lifestyle. But there is that whole thing I do as well. I do have the difference between my social life and my work life or my whatever I’m concentrating on at the time that happens. I’m not the kind of person that has to show the world everything that I’m doing. Like if I’m if I’m up at 4 or 5:00 in the morning to train, okay, that’s for me. That’s for me to do that and for me to show that I don’t need to show everybody what I’m doing. And they see me in the evenings. In the afternoons. It’s completely different from what I’ve probably put in throughout the day.

Trent Clark: [00:08:51] I really appreciate that; you’re not living your entire life on Instagram. Thank you. Thank you for not posting that 4:05 workout this morning. I just want to thank you in advance, but like, it’s, uh, it’s true. I think that what people somewhat expect, you know, and that we’re going to be transparent about everything we do in our lives. And the external doesn’t always match the internal wiring. Like, listen, a lot of people and I think this is the big value now of assessments. Right. Uh, from you name it, all the assessments out there. Right. There’s so many now with this and Myers-Briggs and you just go on and on. And I love a lot of them. And, you know, I like the utilization because I have identified a ton of fabulous leaders. And people are, judging by just external communication sometimes or lack of, and like, you know, we just don’t see the enthusiasm out of, you know. Judith and I don’t know if she’s going to manage this kind of intensity. And I’m like, oh, I don’t know if you know this about Judith, but she raised her three little brothers on her own. She’s been a just a tomcat and killed and maimed for other people in her life, like, more than once. I mean, this person is absolutely fierce and they don’t see it, right? So they don’t think it exists internally because externally it doesn’t necessarily show in the office pool from 9 to 5. What have you found about that, Rob?

Rob Harrison: [00:10:24] It’s one of those sort of areas where like I think I saw it from my mum more than anyone. Like when I was being brought up, my dad was in the military as well. He was away a lot, and my mum’s job was to bring up two young boys and run her businesses as well in the background, and that was her thing. That was what she had to do. But she also still had to give us the life of kids growing up and everything else in the background, but at the same time making sure that she’s successful to put the sort of food on our plates and the roof over our head. And it was, yeah, I saw a lot and I think I learned a lot for what I do now from that.

Trent Clark: [00:10:59] Yeah. I mean, take me back to 16 year old Rob. Take me back. Did you see yourself like, oh, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to be like, you know. Late, you know, 20s, early 30s. I’m going to move to Mexico, be on a little siesta at Playa del Carmen, and start a little company on my own. I mean, you clearly had a personal drive, father, and military. You went to the Royal Navy pretty quickly, developed a bunch of skills in the aviation engineering and aeronautical engineering, and walk us through a little bit about that, about what 16 year old Rob is the same as today’s Rob.

Rob Harrison: [00:11:38] Yeah, I think like planning my life was planned quite young. I idolized my dad. He was incredible the life he lived. And when we went away on vacations and went to different places, we got to spend some quality time together because he was away for most of the year with the Navy. And so when we did go away and we spent time, we were able to talk and he would tell me all the stories that when he was away and he would go like when he was 17 years old, he was on Copacabana beach, and then he was in some other locations somewhere else and traveled the entire world. And he knew so much about geography and everything that I didn’t really know about at that age. And so in my head, at 16 years old, I was I was already convinced that I’m going to be joining the military at the soonest opportunity, which was 16. I actually applied and turned it down at 16. I was a little bit nervous. And so I went back again at 18 and from that, from my dad’s stories and like, okay, dad, where do I go? What do I do? It wasn’t the entrepreneurial side of things. I never even saw what my mom was doing.

Rob Harrison: [00:12:40] And I think I saw my mom through a lot of stress. I saw her go through a lot of problems with her business. I saw her make some mistakes with business partners or with the things that happened in her business that she wasn’t in control of. And from that I knew the easy route for me was the military. And probably a lot of people don’t think that, okay, a lot of people are like, wow. Like it’s quite hard to join the military and be told what to do, when to be somewhere. What uniform do you wear at all times? But for me, it was normal and that that was the kind of choice I wanted to make at 16. Which then made the journey in the military very easy for me. And I’ll never forget the first day I was there. And I think all the stories that my dad never told me about the military and where I was going to be or what was going to happen, it still didn’t relate to that actual first day. And it was crazy. And like the experiences you have, it’s on the extreme. It’s the way I look at it and people watching this probably think they might disagree with this, but it is very, very close to going to jail.

Rob Harrison: [00:13:41] It is like you, I remember getting on that train, getting down to where the location was of where the military base is, and getting off the train, getting told to go on to a bus, getting on a bus, getting told like they don’t mention your name. You’re a number from literally from the moment you get on that bus, you go in and you go down this big long road which has the barbed wire all the way along it, and then you turn left into the gate, which has barbed wire everywhere, two armed guards, and you go in and that’s it. That’s the moment it starts. And they get you out of the bus, and you put your bag down, and you don’t see it for the rest of the day. And then they’re straight on you and they shave your head straight away–all that sort of stuff with the military, you don’t realize it’s it is quite like a jail, sort of. And I’m like, what? I’m wrong to do this. And then you’ve really got to change your mindset in that it was crazy.

Trent Clark: [00:14:31] Yeah. So from the outside looking in they definitely break you down right away and you realize that, hey we’re going to be doing it our way. You probably don’t have an opinion anymore. Uh and if you do, you won’t like the result of of having an opinion. And, um, you’re sponging up the learning, right. And quite frankly, they’re making it hard enough and busy enough that you don’t really have a lot of time to think about what’s happening. It’s just happening. It’s almost happening to you. Not for you.

Rob Harrison: [00:15:02] Yeah, yeah, it is very, very quick. I mean, the first thing I learned when I joined was. And well, actually, within the first couple of weeks of basic training, it’s very quickly you realize, okay, the decisions aren’t mine. There’s no decision here. That’s mine. I just need to be in the right location at the right time, in the right, in the right uniform. You do that. Everything’s pretty smooth because they will hold your hand for it. They will take you for it because you learn in your training. Just as long as you do those tasks every single time, then you’re in the right place. And I think then efficiency then is built into you very, very early in the military for that.

Trent Clark: [00:15:36] Love it. All right. So let’s talk about one of those stories that you’ve had to overcome. Um, you know, a lot of people love the quote on the winners find a way show that they are losing. Find a way to win. Take us back to one of these trials along your route where you’re deciding like, hey, you got to make some tough decisions here. And you’re thinking, hey, this is a good idea. And yet the data is not really coming in, and this is working out so well, right? So you’re thinking like, hey, what am I going to do? How am I going to turn it around and walk us through a little bit of, of that challenge and one of the many things that you’ve likely faced along your journey. Uh, and it’s still a young journey, Rob. I mean, you’re, you know, you’re still going, but, uh, you know, already 12 years in, in the military. So, you know, you’re now, what, close to 35 now, right? When you got out, uh, now 35.

Rob Harrison: [00:16:29] 33 when I got out. Yeah.

Trent Clark: [00:16:31] Yep, yep. So you’ve been out a few years, and so what’s one of those tales, uh, in your journey that you were up against?

Rob Harrison: [00:16:39] Well, from after leaving or from being in?

Trent Clark: [00:16:43] Your call. Either one’s good for me, man. Like you tell me. Uh, yeah. What was the most impactful to you for me?

Rob Harrison: [00:16:51] My biggest decision is understanding, like, the value of my time. And for me, like I said to you, I’m an all in kind of guy. And I think one of my biggest struggles and I had to get a lot of help with this was understanding what parts are the most important. And for me, it was understanding, obviously the family side of things, having a new wife, like making sure I treat her like my wife, okay, I don’t need to be. She’s not just another person in my house, uh, to make sure that obviously I wanted to. I need to treat my wife who she’s going to be with me, hopefully for the foreseeable. And I want to make sure that she’s happy. So that was a big one for me. And it was something like it used to before that the whole military life, the whole 12 years of living on my own, I moved away from my parents house, uh, when I was, when I was young. So I, I was in the military, so it was only myself I had to look out for. Now, I’m in a position where I had to think about people, and I really did have to make sure. And from doing all the other stuff that I try and cram in and do everything in my life, I do have to make sure that that time is also spent on quality for myself and my partner and my parents and my family, and that was my biggest struggle.

Rob Harrison: [00:18:00] I think that for me was understanding what to put in and what what I needed to do and not overwhelm myself with, with trying to push other things aside. Even like a vacation. As you know, with a business owner, vacations don’t normally turn up in your first couple of years. Yeah, Christmas is a very short period of time. Easter doesn’t even exist. And so you need to think like, okay, what is the priority? And like okay, for for other people who aren’t entrepreneurs, who are in your family and my wife and my family aren’t. Okay. And my mom now my dad are retired. So they they want the time. So for when they come and visit me out here in Mexico, it’s that’s quality, that’s quality time. And I really had to try to switch off and. That’s when the team comes in. That’s when building everything out. And that, for me, was the most stressful point of knowing that I can. I need to step back from my business to make sure I give the quality time to my to people around me. Um, yeah.Trent Clark: [00:18:53] I mean, one of the things and this is this is an interesting thing I’d like you to break down for me, because a lot of people learn prioritization from the military, which I don’t know if it’s learned. It’s certainly told. This is what you should prioritize, right. Like this. And and by the way, if you don’t prioritize these things bed made properly, dress in the right clothes like there is a punishment for your lack of, you know, attention to detail and following our priorities for you. But I will say some of that is that it’s their priorities for us. So now you’re on your own and it’s, oh, Rob’s gotta prioritize. It’s not someone else isn’t going to prioritize it for you. Right. And you have a lot of decisions to make as a business owner about where you could spend your time because it’s endless. Other places you could spend your time as an owner, right. So how do you navigate that first couple of years now that you are the decision maker. Yeah.

Rob Harrison: [00:19:50] That’s actually a really good one because noticed it when you can actually say I’ve had two marriages in my life and one of them lasted 12 years. And it was and because of that, it was there was I married the military because that was everything. And I, I always volunteered for every operational task. I volunteered for all the exercises, anything that we could do to get me away and go abroad. And so I jump on the ship and I’ll go with the aircraft or go wherever what we’re doing. And so everything was planned out. I just had to just go along with it and make sure I was in the right place at the right time. So for me, until I left the military, that was when you’re like, okay, there you go. You got an empty field in front of you. No one’s going to wake you up in the morning. No one’s going to be there. No one’s going to be telling you what to do. And again, no one’s going to be there paying my wages either, because now I’m only as good as what I’m what I’m earning for myself. And so you have to really. Yeah. The prioritization. You really have to think back on what and what there is and what you’re doing. And as you know, with so many tasks in the business, you don’t enjoy all of them.

Rob Harrison: [00:20:52] And, the military, it’s just get in and get it done. It doesn’t matter. Like we always talk about ourselves as being a full time cleaner and a part time engineer because everything, as you know, in the military has to be cleaned, it has to be cleaned ten times over and it has to be cleaned even though it’s clean. Okay. And that’s just a part of the discipline, everything that happens in there. And so for us, we need to make sure that we were in there and we do it and we say yes, okay. But when you’re running your own business and you think, well, I can just push that job to the side and I can probably do it on Friday afternoon and when it’s a little bit quieter and get that sorted, and then Friday afternoon comes along and then you’ve got all the other jobs that you’ve put to the side on the Friday afternoon and not going to be able to happen. Then you’re like, okay, now what do I need to do? Then you realize, okay, um, I either get this done or I get somebody in that can do it for me. And that’s a bit of the prioritization that came in, I was building the team.

Trent Clark: [00:21:38] Yeah, it’s so easy. It’s so easy to do what I like or the urgent as opposed to the important. Right. Like it’s like, oh this has to get done. And like oh that’s really important. But you know, man, I’d really cross something off my list if I did something I really like to do. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. How’s that working out? All right. So, um, let’s talk a little bit about the strategies of growth. Magnified is growing. You, uh, you have a five headed monster out there with, uh, some great partners, some great entrepreneurial, uh, men that are not only your partners, but, but, but mentors. And as you drive in this business, um, you know, not surprisingly, um, you’ve identified some real skill sets, some real, uh, triggers of people that have allowed Magnified to really scale because you’re getting great hires. Is that fair?

Rob Harrison: [00:22:31] Yeah, it is definitely. And I think from having the guys in the business with me, um, has been the biggest, the driving force for us to know what to do and when to do it. And, and like for me, starting this off all on my own, everything on my own and building every single part of the business out on my own, I would probably be a quarter of where I am now, and I mean that like it’s for me having having some, having some guys in the background with me in different areas as well. This isn’t just like five sales guys deciding what that’s just going to be a mess. Okay. You know that. And it was having guys that specialize in in in the account side of things okay. In growth. Okay. The hunters in the farmers in the business all everyone has a different role. And from that being consistent with each other and learning and them showing me what not to do. Okay, I’ve done it. I’ve had a few times where I’ve been like, okay, this is the next big idea. This is the thing. I’m this is what I’m going to put all my energy into and literally look at it. No, don’t do that. And I’m like, how can you say that? Like this is and they’re like, okay, this is what we’ve done in the past and tried this and it didn’t go in the right direction. And then they can predict it very, very quickly from past, um, mistakes or. Or what they’ve done and they’ve it’s been incredible, honestly, having those guys in there with us.

Trent Clark: [00:23:46] So why don’t you give us one quick example maybe. You know, I know we’re not in the academy, but maybe one quick tip that Magnified gets and utilizes to identify and recruit a great new hire. What’s something we as business owners should be thinking about and identifying or recruiting a top first round draft choice?

Rob Harrison: [00:24:09] The main thing that I can see is what we do when we’re recruiting new people which is a four stage process. Okay. We have a four stage process with four different interviews, okay. The guys come through and they have an intro okay. There’s an intro. This is great. Then there’s different tactics and different areas of what we what we talk to people about. And because we’ve got enough people in the company that can see it in different views, okay, it’s not just one guy with his only one, one outlook on it. Then we have a full meeting afterwards to understand, okay. From what we had on those meetings, what were the biggest traits and the biggest sort of pros and cons for that person coming in and what they can do. And I think now we’ve had three people come into our company that have come into a certain role, but we’ve actually given them a different role knowing that they’re actually their attributes could be helped in a different area from what they’ve done. And it’s only because of the job they had before. They’ve probably applied for the job that we’ve put out. But actually because we’re building as a company, we’ve we’ve got other areas that we’re looking for and it’s been incredible for us to build people in there. And it’s been amazing for us to do that and then have them in there to help us make those decisions as well.

Trent Clark: [00:25:18] Love it. Alright. Like, so few teams really know how to get the right people and even better, identify great people and put them in a better seat than maybe even what they applied for. I think that’s a great lesson there. Um, so we’ll keep that four stage process in mind for hiring people. And then one of the challenges of strategy, of growth, which, uh, I love the, um, old African proverb. Right. Uh. Sharp spear. Dull handle like you guys have created, measured and improving process. You’ve created sales and marketing strategies for companies like mine companies all over the world and in your own company. This is like the shoemaker’s kids don’t have any shoes. This is not something you’ve spent a lot of time building your scalable and winning strategy for Magnified.

Rob Harrison: [00:26:22] That’s it. It has been a journey where we have clients, we have weekly meetings to show them how to grow, how to show themselves out there and, and to be able to advertise in the right ways, saying the right things, even the verything they get from from introductions of new leads coming in for their DM process, everything away through to booking in the calls. And we’ve never actually put that process properly in place for our company. Yet we’ve we’ve been very lucky that word of mouth has helped us get new clients. Um, but we’ve we’ve now the growth strategy for us is like most of our energy is now going towards advertisement appointment setters, finding the getting the right people in the business to to be able to, to help us be seen more. But we’re not we we are we’re in that position where we we’re we’re massively helping all of our clients in in growth and and taking them from we’ve, we’ve sort of ten-x quite a few companies that we’ve, we’ve come in on and helped them with everything in their background. But then yeah, it’s the bit you it’s the bit you miss yourself. It’s crazy that we haven’t actually executed that yet.

Trent Clark: [00:27:30] What would you say? I mean, you’re in industry. I’m a LinkedIn guy. I have a lot of followers there. And I mean, people come out of the woodwork and hit folks up like me. Especially in your area, there is a lot of noise about your specialty in the market. How do you at Magnified differentiate yourself? And this is, by the way, for anyone out there and we’re all there because if you’re a plumbing house and you do plumbing, there’s also 37 other plumbers in your town. And so why do they call you instead of calling someone else? Because anyone can, quote unquote, turn a wrench and reset a toilet and unclog a drain and, you know, install piping, you know, like. I don’t want to downplay the commodity of plumbing, but the skill set has been learned. And there’s competitors. You have competitors in the market and the noise is loud. Rob I mean, it is loud. How does Magnified separate themselves from others?

Rob Harrison: [00:28:33] The thing that we get told time and time again by all of our clients, the biggest thing that we do is we get fully immersed in their business, okay? We understand them inside and out. So we become their subject matter expert. We’re their representatives. We’re not we’re not there just to put a few sales words in and to try and get a client over the line. We, we use obviously sales skills to, to be able to get the right, the right sale in on, on that first time call. But at the same time, we want to be seen as, as a subject matter expert within that industry, within that company that we’ve been there for years, and that’s what they love. And when we come in and we have the the onboarding process for one of our clients, they can’t believe how much that we ask about their business and go into their business, and especially the coaches that we work with. And I’m like, okay, great. Well, give me a coaching platform. I’m in. I’m a client of yours now for the next, the next foreseeable, whatever it needs to be. I want to understand exactly what they’re getting.

Rob Harrison: [00:29:26] How are they getting it, what the onboarding process is, how every how every single one of your clients is enjoying the program. Because if I’m not doing it and I’m not enjoying it and I’m not, you can’t really. And this is something that I tell all my sales team, you can’t sell something you don’t use or you don’t enjoy. Okay. And our sales team are great because every single one of our team that sell for nutrition and fitness coaches have a nutrition and fitness background. Everyone who’s involved in selling for our real estate investor, um, coaches have a real estate investment background. And so it’s great. They can then get involved and they know the program straightaway. They can know exactly what’s going to happen. And then from there have everything set up and it works really well. And then from that, having strategies with the clients each week and understanding how we can increase bottom line value, how we can increase their closing percentage just by what they do as a smooth transition from the lead, from even just a potential lead to them becoming, um, a client and booked in on our calendar.

Trent Clark: [00:30:27] Love it. Let’s come back to the other. Really. And you have a number of them. But let’s go to another 16 strategy of growth. And another superpower of yours is. You’re very good at measured and improving processes. You get into processes and can easily get KPIs around that, that all of a sudden becomes very repeatable and, um, sustainable. Like when processes repeat themselves again and again and again, the results become predictable. Right? And so walk me through how you develop that from your team standpoint.

Rob Harrison: [00:31:12] So yeah, with the process side of things, it was it was all it is back in the day when, when this started out and it was just that understanding of, okay, what’s going to be more efficient. There was a lot of, uh, copy paste manual work involved, long nights just trying to figure it out. And I think as soon as we came across put in the system in place. Okay. But then having the right people that can write run the system, we did have a couple of people that started with us who were like, yeah, I’ve got background in this side of things. But it wasn’t,this was new. This is a whole new system. This isn’t something that that we can just copy from somebody else. This wasn’t even done. Okay. Having having a different way of being able to get all the automations, the workflows, everything through for the process, for someone booking in to then come in into the call and everything like that. Okay. They needed to have all the messages sent to them.

Rob Harrison: [00:32:03] It needs to be personalized. It needed to be on a level which is going to make them excited to get on the call. Okay, just having a robot there in the background is not going to work. So we had to work out that system that was in there. And for us putting those processes in place and just going over it again and again and working out. What works and what doesn’t work. Okay. There’s a lot of trial and error. There’s a lot of hours that went into it. And I think that’s the engineering background for me. I love the build work of. All right. Maybe I’m not I’m not I haven’t got my hands on an engine or I haven’t got I’m not there working on aerodynamics or anything like that of an aircraft. But it’s exactly the same processes and mindset and thought process that goes into building a CRM or goes into building, um, a full workflow, which is exactly the same as engineering. And that, I think, just keeps me going and keeps me excited.

Trent Clark: [00:32:49] Well, I think let’s talk quickly about those folks who’ve like, hey, I learned how to scale to a $50,000 revenue a month, and I’ve had systems for that. And now. You need to take this group to $250,000 a month. Right. And they’re not ready to learn that there’s going to have to be a new process. They’re not ready to accept because they. Well, I’ve always done it this way. Have you been challenged by sales people that you’ve hired that are a little bit set in their ways? This is the way we’ve always done it? Rob. Like, I mean, I’ve never actually had a group that sold 250,000, so I have no experience with it. But I’m holding on to this other process because I’m a little scared to let it go. Is that fair? I mean, have you have you what do you what do you do when you’re running that challenge? Because, you know, as entrepreneurs, we run across this, right? And when we don’t have that open mindset of our team members ready to take it to the next level, uh, a lot of times they they tend to eliminate themselves.

Rob Harrison: [00:33:53] Yeah. There’s two different ways of looking at that really, because the first one is the team members themselves having the right mindset of what they’re selling and the scalability side of things, what they’re selling. If you’ve got someone that’s just coming in and they’re on a salary, for instance, and you’re saying to them, okay, I just need you to do this and this every day. They will keep doing that, that process for the salary when you show it as an incentive and what the build growth looks like and, and the commission based side of things, because that’s what we are. We’re 100% commission based. Every single salesperson for us is commission based. Okay. So the incentive straightaway is if you don’t sell, you’re not going to you’re not going to make any money on that. Okay. So how would you obviously going to go in and understand the numbers for what that is. Then everything for the system that we have in place. So now now we’ve got the other guys working as the operations side who are there to bring me all the data from everything that’s been going on, everything that’s booking in, everything from no show rate all the way through to, um, offers, even, uh, the percentage of offers, um, brought up as well. Okay. So we need to know exactly what we’re looking at and how we’re offering what we’re offering to the clients and what type of clients are coming in, what demographic. There’s many different variables in this. So I have to go through that. And as a team, we go through that and look at exactly where those variables are and what we can see that can be changed and can be adjusted.

Rob Harrison: [00:35:14] And then that’s where we then show, okay, here’s the data. This is what we need okay. This is exactly where we need to be to go to this level. If we hit this level then we’ve got incentives to work on. We’ve got bonuses to hit. Um, especially when the sales team, you know, it’s like bonuses are uh, is what everyone loves to see. Everybody loves to see targets hit. Um, but when you’ve got an operations team, okay, operations is great. They make it work. Okay. And then they go, well, but having the data which is can be extracted and we can show that it’s obvious if the data is showing that that we can we can improve this. If we increase a lead generation just by 10% of getting the same, or change just a couple of messages that get sent through, we can completely, completely change the game. And I did literally last week we had the same thing. Uh, one of my clients was was telling me, and we’re looking at the no show rate was going up and up and up over the last sort of three months, and we were over 30%, no show rate, which is which is not right for what we’re trying to do. Um, we changed the message, literally changed the message into a question with, uh, an acknowledgement about price. And we reduced the no, no show rate right down to around 12%. And we increased the revenue by 25%. Wow. Just on one little change. And those sort of things came because of data because of what we saw.

Trent Clark: [00:36:31] Yeah. So if, if, you know, there’s a lot of people out there right now, Rob and they’re analysis paralysis, they’re getting stuck. Things are harder. Uh, it’s more expensive and oh, man, I don’t want to do this. My insurance has gone up. Uh, my cost of goods services are going up. I’m not making more money, and I’m working harder than ever. What do you. What do you tell a group that says they can’t afford you? That, uh, we’re we’re not going to be able to keep growing. What do you tell people in that category, uh, that’s struggling right now? What would you say to them.

Rob Harrison: [00:37:03] The people that are struggling, that kind of the way that I look at it, okay, is different in the areas. Okay. When I’m talking to them. Okay. He’s going to understand where they’re at and what they’re doing, how many hats they’re wearing. Okay. And there’s another big part of it okay. Taking off one of the hats does cost okay. Because you’re going to bring in an outsourced team or you’re going to bring in another employment of somebody in your company, okay. It’s going to cost. So you’re adding to the problem. When you take on something different that’s going to be the sort of area of where it’s going to overcome that problem. And, you know, it’s going to overcome that problem by seeing things like data and different areas that are going to be able to increase and increase their efficiency, increase their productivity. Um, and obviously the, the overall, um, the overall amount coming in every month, you’ve got to really look at like what what’s going to happen? Okay. For me on a sales call. Okay. There’s only three reasons why someone wouldn’t buy okay. If they don’t see the value okay. If they don’t trust me or if they don’t understand it. Okay, then if they, if any of those three come like that’s that’s for me. The only reasons why someone wouldn’t get involved and wouldn’t do it. Okay. And they say it’s not for them. Um, and that’s where I’ve got to keep asking the questions and go through it with them. But what we what we offer with Magnified is a little bit different because we’re commission only.

Rob Harrison: [00:38:18] There are no retainers, there is no any extra things like that. Okay. What we what we look at is how we can increase their bottom line revenue and what they’re doing with their bottom line price to increase their revenue for a higher percentage than what we charge as commission. Okay. And that’s my job. That is that is my sole job to do that within the first within the first month of working with them. And we’ve done it with a lot of our clients and especially with coaches that are coming in. They’ve been struggling like we got we got one of our coaches Nancy. She’s incredible. She’s been one of the highest leading coaches in Canada. She’s been in pretty much every magazine cover you can think of. She looks incredible. Um, she’s she came to me and she said, like, Rob, I’ve never made more than 15 K in one month, ever. I’m like, okay, well, let me look at your systems. Let me go through everything for you, and I’ll just see if you’re a good fit for us. And I said to her, I said, look, okay, there’s many things I’ll change in this and there’s many different areas I’ll change in your pricing, your structure, what you’re doing. Uh, in her first month of working with us, we took her to over $100,000. Wow. In the first month, we took a completely out of everything to do with her sales.

Rob Harrison: [00:39:20] Because coaches, the way the coaches are, okay. And that’s that’s one of our main niches. Coaches love to coach, okay. They love to stay in their their bubble, okay. And that’s something they really enjoy doing. And if you’re staying within your comfort zone, you know you’re doing all right. But then you realize that okay why didn’t I close that person? Well, I’ve actually just coached them on that call and told them what they need to do, and they’ve gone off and done it. And so when it comes to, uh, someone who’s just specializes in getting the sale, okay, you’re not now the negotiator and then the coach, okay? You’re not the bad guy and the good guy, okay? You’re just a good guy, because then we hand them over to the coach who’s then going to be able to then help them change their lives. And for us to to come in and show different ways of doing it. And I remember her saying to me, I said, okay, well, I’m going to change your pricing, okay. You’re $1,800 and you’re offering this for, uh, six months. Whatever it was I said, I said straight away, I said, your value, who you are straight away is, is extremely valuable, okay? Because you’ve done so much. She’s been a coach for 30 years. I said, I’m going to. The first price I’m going to be asking for is 4200. And she’s like, no, you can’t do that. I was like, what? So what do you mean? I love that.

Trent Clark: [00:40:25] Man. I love that. I want ten of the right clients, not 100 of the small clients. Yeah, exactly.

Rob Harrison: [00:40:30] She goes, you can’t do that. I was like, yeah, I said this. I watch this straight increase. And she literally was phoning me up emotionally like, Rob, you’re like a lottery ticket. It’s insane. This is this is crazy. I don’t do anything. You’ve increased my business by so much. And then she was able to get more coaches underneath her. We were taking more demand from taking in more demand. We can. Obviously, my sales team, we can. We can take ten times more calls than what she could do herself. She could then take on more clients because she got coaches underneath her, because now she can afford to take more people on, and she was in the position then just grow from growth. Yeah, she’s just sold up her home, bought anotherH er dream location. She always wanted to live all her life. And she’s been able to do all the stuff that she’s wanted to do and be able to take herself out of the business massively, because she’s got everybody else running it for her, and it was just taking that step.

Trent Clark: [00:41:20] Love it, and I think that’s so valuable that we do kind of hire an expert. We’re not great. Like, let’s do the things we do really well, stay in our lane and be super at that and bring the people, bring the teammates, and they don’t have to be internal to us. I think that’s really important. That’s a good lesson for me. I mean, I talk a lot about this in my book, leading with team leading winning teams. And man, it’s a super big challenge for people to understand that I can be the best I can be, and other people can run circles around me in this. I am not going to be great at everything. And I like your vulnerability about, hey, there’s 16 strategies of growth and you’ve got like 6 or 7. We talked about that. You’re killing it. Like you guys are just on your way and doing these things. And there’s areas we still need work and talking about one of the areas that actually you excel in for others but don’t excel in internally. I love that vulnerability. Like that’s the reality of the deal. And it’s not uncommon with business. So if uh, please, I got the links down below for leading winning teams. If you buy a book today, you can send me a receipt on the email at trent@leadership.com, I will ship you, uh, the five keys to discipline. And if you buy two or you buy one and you buy one to give and give as a gift, I will send you the whole playbook on the pain exchange and strategies for discipline. So that’s a awesome personal self-review for you and welcoming that it is a ball to run through that and you’re only going to get better. Uh, I’ve made a lot of people better in this world and, uh, and a lot of people famous. So you will, uh, absolutely enjoy that self-discovery for Rob. Anything that, um, first of all, Rob, tell them where they can find you. Because I think a lot of people are going to be interested in what Magnified have to offer.

Rob Harrison: [00:43:12] Yeah, we’re, uh, we’re online Magnified. We’re the same as on Instagram as well. Magnified and myself. My personal one as well is Rob and, um. Yeah. I’ll leave. I’ll leave you the links and everything. I’ll send them over to you, um, LinkedIn as well. And um, and we just starting up a YouTube channel now, um, which we’re putting together.

Trent Clark: [00:43:36] Yeah, I think that’ll be, you know, when you’re talking about people learning sales, I mean, man, the YouTube thing, I think it’s funny. I really didn’t see that about YouTube when it started out that it was going to be this big learning platform. Um, how much stuff you can get free. Uh, you know, I just changed the air filter in my car yesterday. Like, you know, like, I would have never thought about doing that. And then I realized that, you know, my auto mechanic wanted to charge me $100. And I thought, you know, I think I could buy it for 12 bucks and do it myself, right? Uh, which I, which I think took me about 3.5 minutes, right. Yeah. So, uh, good lesson for me. Um, and exciting, uh, for everybody out there. Thank you for joining us. The winners find a way show. Super excited about our upcoming retreat. I’m. I’m headed down Rob’s way. I’m headed to Tulum here. Coming up in May. We only have 12 slots. I think there’s only ten remaining. You got to get in there. I’ve got, uh, an early bird up to May 1st. Uh, usually about $7,500. You can get in for $5,000 right now and learn the exact tools and strategies you need to double your business fast. We do that very well and going to have some great people with Corey Warfield and the I space and Rachel Weaver and the PR space and, uh, Amit Rathore in Silicon Valley, expert on the e-commerce. So you were just going to love this trip. And if you’re ready to dive into your business, go to the next level. And who knows, maybe we can get Rob Harrison to drive 20 minutes and come over and see us, man. Hang out in Tulum, man. What up? Yeah, yeah.

Rob Harrison: [00:45:02] For sure.

Trent Clark: [00:45:03] Yeah, definitely. That’ll be sweet. That’ll be sweet. You heard it here first. Rob Harrison might make an appearance. What up. Definitely. So that would be pretty awesome. Rob. Anything, uh, to leave the crowd with. Uh, do you want to, uh, any any offer for magnify that you offer some first timers, uh, a one, a meeting or anything like that? Yeah.

Rob Harrison: [00:45:21] Um, I can yeah, I can definitely. Oh, the other thing is that we can do is, uh, we have a community as well that I can open up and and give free entry for as well. I can leave the link with you for, for anyone that wants to join the community. Um, I update it every week. I do a mastermind every week as well. Um, with anybody that joins into our academy program, um, which I can leave links for that. And everything is built into the community as well with, with what we do. Okay. And we are we are sorting out a retreat next year. We are doing a few different in-person events. And the main thing for me really is to, is to just be around a lot of like minded individuals that are trying to do the same thing, and that’s that’s our biggest push.

Trent Clark: [00:45:59] Great. Well, listen, I’m going to push, man. Maybe I’ll get a speaking engagement at the Magnified, uh, you know, annual retreat, man. I mean, I might try to lobby my way in there. Rob. Like, that’d be pretty sweet to see all the people that are growing and killing it, um, with Magnified and the help from them, because it can absolutely be a game changer. And getting that system right is, uh. And, you know, I hear it, uh, from your example of that peace of mind from that coach. It’s so incredible. So for everybody out there, thank you so much for joining us on the Winter sideways show every Friday, 12:30 p.m. eastern, 9:30 a.m. Pacific. On the leadership of the YouTube channel, LinkedIn Live and Facebook Live, and you can find our podcast everywhere. With now over 5000 downloads a week, you are going to want to check it out for everybody else. We’ll see you next time on winners, by the way.

Here are the key takeaways from the interview:

• Rob Harrison is the CEO of Magnified, a company that helps coaches grow their businesses.
• Magnified helps coaches by understanding their business inside and out, developing onboarding processes, and creating sales strategies.
• Magnified also uses a data-driven approach to improve their processes and results.
• Rob recommends that entrepreneurs who are struggling to grow their businesses consider hiring an expert to help them with specific areas of their business.
• Magnified offers a free community for anyone interested in learning more about how to grow their business.

Here are some of the speaker’s quotes:

• “The biggest thing that we do is we get fully immersed in their business, okay? We understand them inside and out. So we become their subject matter expert.”
• “We’re not there just to put a few sales words in and to try and get a client over the line.”
• “There’s a lot of trial and error. There’s a lot of hours that went into it. And I think that’s the engineering background for me.”
• “The people that are struggling, that kind of the way that I look at it, okay, is different in the areas. Okay. When I’m talking to them. Okay. He’s going to understand where they’re at and what they’re doing, how many hats they’re wearing.”
• “There is no there is no retainers, there is no any extra things like that. Okay. What we what we look at is how we can increase their bottom line revenue and what they’re doing with their bottom line price to increase their revenue for a higher percentage than what we charge as commission.”